PSD2 (Payment Services Directive 2) is about to revolutionize the provision of payment and banking services within the European Single Market. All banks will be mandated to expose APIs that allow authorized third parties secure access to account information for making payments and carrying out other kinds of banking and financial transactions.
Banks will have to compete with a whole host of new entrants into the payment services markets. They include well-known global companies such as Amazon and PayPal, as well as highly innovative fintech startups.
Because PSD2 is enabled through APIs, it will be vital for companies exposing and consuming APIs, and also for regulators, to understand how these APIs are behaving from the end-user perspective. So it’s going to be important to use a third party tool to undertake performance and quality monitoring of the APIs using synthetic transactions in order to understand fully their historical and real-time behavior.
By doing this, organizations will be able to identify and rectify problems with APIs quickly. The sources of any issues with PSD2 APIs will also be clear, which will help reduce conflict between providers and consumers of APIs, and regulators.
Photo courtesy of Karl Baron
Understanding PSD2
To help people better understand PSD2 and its importance, APImetrics has produced a whitepaper entitled PSD2, APIs and Performance and Quality Monitoring.
The whitepaper provides full insight into what PSD2 is, how it will affect the payment services market in the European Single Market, and why it is essential for organizations exposing or consuming PSD2 and other open banking APIs need to undertake API performance and quality monitoring to understand the APIs.